IAB: Direct brands thrive in brick-and-mortar dust

“Today, we are in a business where value is created in a promiscuously available ‘stack-your-own’ supply chain, where ideas can become physical products virtually overnight.

Randall Rothenberg, CEO, IAB

“The business of our business is changing,” Randall Rothenberg announced to some 1,400 delegates in his opening address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) 2019 Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM).

“Value extraction,” the IAB CEO offered, “happens less and less in third-party retail stores, but in the direct relationships brands have with their millions of individual end consumers.”

At the 2018 gathering, Rothenberg – and the IAB itself – branded a powerful new “direct-brand” economy where digitally-minded entrepreneurs could bypass the middlemen of publishers, retailers and such third-party services as advertising agencies and use the data-driven ecommerce as a direct connection to consumers.